Posts tagged ‘mobile’

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Two big brands have embraced social games as a means to engage with their intended demographics. They’ve teamed up with two of the most successful game developers in the social game arena.

In the automotive industry, to promote the new 2013 Escape, Ford partnered with Zynga to host the world’s largest Words With Friends game. Fans of Ford’s Facebook page can collectively play Words With Friends against celebrity Jenny McCarthy, who will be at the live event in Los Angeles unveiling the new 2013 Ford Escape.

“By revealing the new Escape through a popular social game like Words With Friends, Ford is able to expand its reach beyond traditional social channels to mobile platforms that engage a broader audience of younger professionals,” said Matt VanDyke, director of U.S. marketing communications for Ford.

Over in the electronics and mobile device sector, Samsung is looking to create buzz in an over-saturated smartphone market for their Galaxy SII. By partnering with Rovio’s Angry Birds, Samsung is able to access over 50 million unique active fans; their target audience.

The collaboration entailed the creation of an elite Galaxy SII level, never before seen images, online videos, contests and bragging rights to the exclusive content, especially the “Golden Egg.” The Golden Egg was critical to the success of the campaign since it was dependent upon going viral.

“The development of an ownable Golden Egg Galaxy level, combined with targeted mobile rich across technology and entertainment environments, delivered an incredible response to the campaign — more than 1.6 million game plays and average of eight minutes of engagement per user,” reports Kristen Kelly, VP global business developer.

Eight minutes of engagement per user? No mobile phone television ad that I’m aware of could ever achieve that. Sure, social games contain ads today, especially the free apps. But that’s peanuts compared to these integrated campaigns. Prepare to see more of it…a whole lot more of it as marketers, advertisers and big brands look for social game partners.

In a previous post, Social Games are a Marketer’s Backdoor, I touched on how game developers and marketers are using [mobile] social games as a means to get consumers to essentially opt-in to marketing messages. That was just the beginning. Now it’s time to make money, big money.

According to the New York Times, as reported by Gartner, video game spending is on point to reach $112 billion by 2015. In that same time period, mobile gaming is expected to take a 20% bite out of gaming platforms.

In what form will this mobile video game spending come in? Well I can tell you it won’t be for the actual app, but instead, mobile ads and in-app purchases (see report).